The opening night of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the weekend was a dazzling affair. When it was first staged, in February 2011, the Royal Ballet’s first new full-evening offering for 16 years instantly impressed, a response to Lewis Carroll’s writing that had just the right crazy glint in its eye. And in this revival, almost exactly one year on, it is looking better yet.

It is still, inevitably, at the mercy of its source material’s episodic structure, and its creator Christopher Wheeldon as ever seems a talented choreographer who has yet to find a distinctive “voice”. But this is nevertheless a craftsmanlike piece of dance and great, giddy, fun for young and old, and Wheeldon has now altered it intelligently, too.

Besides a lovely new coup de théâtre in Act 1, he has also split that overlong first act in two. This means that 'Alice' is now in three acts, and therefore - because of the extra interval - a longer evening. And yet, sawing the previously 70-minute first act in half has had the counter-intuitive effect of speeding up the show, besides which, so silky are the visual and musical dissolves between vignettes that, despite the “and then, and then, and then” narrative, there is a considerable sense of flow.

Joby Talbot’s score, flawlessly played by the house orchestra, is as colourful and mercurial as it is cinematic, and Bob Crowley’s designs are an LSD-laced banquet for the eyes. Gold stars to both.

The same goes for the performances, which if anything are even finer than last year. Lauren Cuthbertson is a bright, breezy, effervescent Alice, one with whom you genuinely come to empathise, and as before she is stunningly supported by Ed Watson’s angsty but elegant White Rabbit, Steven McRae’s deranged, tap-dancing Mad Hatter and Eric Underwood’s slinky Caterpillar. In changes to the original first cast, Philip Mosley has a ball as the Duchess, Laura Morera is part queen bee, part preying mantis, part giant tomato as the Queen of Hearts, and Federico Bonelli dances the Jack of Hearts with such grace and good humour that you don’t miss Sergei Polunin one bit.

So, is Wheeldon the new Ashton or MacMillan? Not yet. But the carnivalesque atmosphere his show whipped up at the Opera House on Saturday night was intoxicating and exceptional. As he takes the post of joint resident choreographer at Covent Garden, he - along with everyone else involved in this mind-boggling production - should also take a bow.